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One of the things about going to the temple often is that it
can be too easy to fall into a rut of thinking about the same old things, when
the temple is meant to be a revelatory experience.

How can the temple be a revelatory experience when we do the
same things over and over and hear the same words over and over?

My experience with scripture study over years of diligent
reading has taught me that applying my own concerns and experience to what is
done and said in the temple can bring interesting insight.(I remember during a time I was taking
an online class on selling, I went to the temple for an endowment session and
noticed in the garden of Eden sequence Satan was a pretty wily salesman.)

Recently I went to the temple with my husband and we did a
sealing session and I tried something I hadn’t tried before.In addition to listening to the words
as the sealer spoke them, I tried to imagine reading those words as if they were displayed on the wall.(I did this because the reading process
for me is very important to my ability to analyze and comprehend, and if I only
hear the words I don’t get to do that.)

Imagining seeing the words displayed as they were spoken
took a lot of brainpower and I didn’t succeed fully in imagining all the words,
but I succeeded enough that I noticed new things that I hadn’t noticed
before.Certain words jumped out
at me with new significance, and I started to grasp linkages between phrases
that I hadn’t found before.I felt
like the experience was profitable enough that I think I will try it during
some of the other temple ordinances.

A few weeks before that, my husband and I had an opportunity
to go through an endowment session presented with American Sign Language (ASL).This was a fascinating experience
too.It was difficult because the
sign for the words spoken was usually shown before or had slipped behind, but with as little ASL vocabulary as I had, I was able to catch some wonderful
things.It really stretched my
brain as I tried to match the signs I had seen with the words said, and the
signs I could match really augmented my sense of the meaning of those words.

When I took a film class at ASU, one of the principles
talked about was mise en scene, which is the placing of the objects on the
stage and the environment. (Yes, it is a French term, so good luck pronouncing
it.) We learned that film directors often use the scenery and the objects in
the frame to add meaning to the movie action.With this in mind, I started watching the background of the
endowment film to see if I could discern anything that added to the meaning of
the dialogue and action.And I was
able to find a few things.There was
some symbolism there that I hadn’t noticed before.

So now I ask you, what skills have you applied to your
temple experience to make it more meaningful?What techniques and perspectives have helped you derive more
meaning from it?Will you share
those, while still keeping sacred things sacred?

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About Me

Michaela Stephens

Arizona, United States

I'm a happily married 32-year old who switched from Electronic Engineering Technology to Literature, Writing, and Film.
I worked for 3 years at ASU as a writing tutor and have over 400 sessions worth of experience helping people with their writing.
I'm the oldest of seven children (5 boys, 2 girls)
I'm a bit of a neat freak and an undeniable bookworm.

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